Creating Gods

Seated in a little red brick church in a non-descript little town in the Great Northwest for a Christmas Eve service. We watch as a pastor calls all the children up from the pews to come sit down in a circle around her in the front of the church for what she calls 'story time'. It was already well past 7PM on Christmas Eve. One could only imagine how impatient the children were feeling, being so close to the midnight hour when Santa Claus is supposed to come barreling down their chimneys to drop off all the presents they'd asked for this year. As adults we could still feel the excitement of the children as they were asked to sit very still and participate in a 'raise your hands when I ask' question and answer session. Nonetheless, excitement and all, the kids did a decent job of trying to remain quiet and listen, speaking only when they were called on. They sat on a carpeted floor in a circle around the female pastor, surrounded by decorative wreaths, christmas trees, burning candles, colorful stockings and other holiday knickknacks.

The stated purpose of this children's moment was for the kids, ranging in age from 3 to about 11, to open various wrapped presents that would act as hints while the pastor asked them leading questions in order to prod the traditional birth of Jesus story out of them. Of course the children were much more interested in what was inside each successive gift that would get ripped open than they were in any story telling, but the pastor stayed firm and persisted in trying to prod the story and all of its details out of them. One assumes the moment was for the pleasure and benefit of the adults in the congregation who had children with them. Little by little the pastor, a non-descript female appearing to be in her late thirties with short dark hair and glasses and wearing a solid black robe, was able to guide the children to work their way through the entire story; from Mary's first angel visitation to the great hejira from Nazareth to Bethlehem to the eventual birth of the baby Jesus to the climactic visit of the three wise men (or Kings) who had traveled from the far off Middle East to come pay their respects for the newborn. The process took close to forty minutes, or so it seemed.

Observing the moment objectively, from the stands so to speak, I could not help but feel for these kids. Christmas is confusing and stimulating enough what with all the strange myths and legends that surround the big day, not to mention all the contradictory information and media hype that compete for our attention during this strange holiday.

On the one hand Christmas is all about a fat white man with curly long hair and a beard who wears a red felt suit and who goes by numerous different names, Santa Clause, Kris Kringle, jolly Saint Nick, Saint Nicholas, who mysteriously jumps down off your roof and into your family's chimney in the middle of the night to give you presents; save for those children whose homes don't happen to have fireplaces or chimneys. Christmas Day is all about the enormity and excitement of that incredible early morning when you awake to find boundless and bountiful presents under a tree your parents have placed smack dab in the middle of your living room. The tree is usually never explained. Neither are the flying reindeer or the miraculous ability of this one man to know exactly what you want or how he manages to sweep through hundreds of millions of chimneys in a matter of less than a few hours. No. As long as you're a good person, as deemed by the ostensibly jolly and all seeing fat man, you'll get the goods. And for many years that's all that matters when we are children. When we don't receive everything we asked Santa for, the story begins to break down in our young minds immediately, but we do our best to build up defenses to rational thinking about this fact and try our best to keep believing.

On the other hand the adults around us seem very keen to get us to believe that Christmas is all about the birth of this little baby half way around the world who we are supposed to worship as a god. Despite his humble and meager beginnings, or perhaps because of them, we are led to believe that this odd little baby who we know next to nothing about is not only the son of a god, but is a god himself, but in human form. God of the entire universe and everything in it. He is all powerful, knows everything, and is capable of reading the minds and thoughts of everyone in the world. He is also in control of everything that happens to us throughout our entire lifetime. THAT they claim is the true meaning of Christmas. Not Santa, not presents, not Rudolph the red nosed reindeer, not Frosty the snowman and not that strange tree in the living room. Why else would our parents make us go to church every year on the evening before Christmas day and recite this odd story of the little baby's birth... He's the reason for the season. And just in case we forget that fact, we are repeatedly asked to recite the story of this child's birth and all its strange and contradictory facts and details, both in private and in public, until it appears we believe it wholeheartedly and without a shadow of doubt.

Somehow this seems to tie in to our being entitled to receive a lot of presents each year. It isn't difficult to understand how and why we as children are so eager to memorize the details of this story, nor why we so readily profess to believe it. It isn't just about presents and toys and clothes and stockings stuffed with more goodies, it's also a matter of approval. We are never asked how we feel about the story, or what we think about it. Rather we are blanketly advised that regardless of how we might feel about it that it's what we believe. Why? Because it's what our parents believe. It's what our siblings and neighbors believe. It's what the whole world believes. Or so they should.

The only problem is that as we get older, and not that much older, we begin to learn that the whole world doesn't believe this story. Nor do they believe that the little baby born in the barn is a god. In fact most people in the world don't even celebrate Christmas. They have their own holidays. With their own stories and their own gods. They too are tempted with gifts and approval if they memorize these ancient stories and profess to believe them. Perhaps they too go to churches as children and sit in circles around men and women in black robes and are made to recite god stories by candlelight in order to receive love and attention and approval and the material things they want most. Just like us.

As I watched the children finally let loose from the front of the church begin to slowly walk down the center aisle to rejoin their parents in the church pews, I recognized with sadness and dismay how small, cute and innocent these children were, how young and vulnerable, how eager they are for attention and approval. They'd profess to believing in anything as long as it meant home, security, safety, acceptance, camaraderie with others and love. What choice do they have? They're dependent on these adults in this room for their very survival, for everything from the clothes on their bodies to the food that sustains their life, from their education to the bed they sleep in each night. What else are they to believe about life and the universe except what their parents teach them? So it goes for these beautiful children in this small wooden church in the middle of nowhere USA. And so it goes for nearly every other child on planet earth, albeit with different gods and different stories. Who is to fault them?

Yet who are they? They are us when we are children. All of us, no matter where we are born or grow up. All wanting the same things out of life. Love, compassion, empathy, acceptance, safety and security, smiles of approval and gentle pats on the backs, little hugs and big hugs and someone to tuck us into bed at night and give us a few kisses. It's no wonder we claim to believe what we are told to. We continue to perpetuate the creation of these gods not because we believe them to be true, or believe it to be necessarily a good thing to do, or a right thing, or a just cause. But simply because our very survival seems to depend on it.